To soak up oil spills, pour kitty litter on the oil, and then use a brick to grind the kitty litter up to make it more absorbent. Leave the kitty litter on the oil for 20 minutes or longer before sweeping it up.

Watch the video above to find out more.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Joe Truini: It’s very common to have greasy oil stains on your driveway or garage floor, as we have here. And if you don’t clean it up right away, it’ll soak in and become a permanent stain. Now, it might be from a leaky oil pan; or, in this case, I recently changed the oil, and I just accidentally spilled some onto the floor.

So we are going to clean it up using kitty litter. Use any old kitty litter. You can buy the most inexpensive type; it doesn’t have to be anything fancy. But you want to cover it, a nice thick layer just like that, a nice thick layer of kitty litter.

And then we’re going to use a brick—this is half a brick, but any size brick or even a chuck of two by four will work—and we’re going to pulverize the kitty litter. You want to grind it up until a fine powder because the finer the powder is the more it will absorb the oil.

And that’s the whole point of kitty litter, right? It does a great job at absorbing liquids, including oil stains.

Now, ordinarily, I would let that set for 15 or 20 minutes or even overnight if it’s a really thick, deeply set stain. But we’re going to—I’ll show you how, even just a few seconds, how well it does at absorbing that oil.

Now, from that puddle, you can see you just have an outline of the stain. And, again, if I let that kitty litter set, that stain will be completely gone by morning.


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avatar for Joe Truini

Joe Truini

Radio Show Co-Host

Joe Truini is a contractor, author, and the host of “Simple Solutions” on Today’s Homeowner TV and the weekly Today’s Homeowner radio show. He has worked on both large commercial projects and residential remodeling, and has written for national publications such as This Old House and Popular Mechanics. He has also written eight books, including three best-selling shed-building books. Joe lives in Connecticut with his family and enjoys hiking, traveling, and baseball in his spare time.

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